SPACE SHUTTLE

The first reusable manned spacecraft

Columbia was the very first Space Shuttle to blast off from the Kennedy Space Center on 12 April 1981. It was mounted on a huge 47-metre (154-foot) long and eightmetre (27-foot) diameter external tank and two solid booster rockets to take it into orbit. The boosters were jettisoned into the Atlantic Ocean where they were recovered and reused, and nine minutes after launch the external tank fell away into the atmosphere and burnt up over the Pacific Ocean. After its mission, the Shuttle ‘orbiter’ landed on a runway like a conventional aircraft. It could then be refurbished to be launched once more into space.

The flight of Columbia proved that the 2.5 million parts of the Space Transportation System (STS) – as it was officially called – were fully functional. The Shuttle fleet consisted of Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis. Atlantis flew the very last mission in July 2011. During this 30-year period, the combined fleet conducted 133 successful missions, made over 21,000 Earth orbits, travelled almost 873 million kilometres (543 million miles) and carried more than 850 astronauts.

Two major disasters struck the Shuttle program. Challenger broke up and exploded during liftoff on 28 January 1986, while Columbia disintegrated during re-entry on 1 February 2003. Nonetheless, the Shuttle craft made many notable achievements, including 37 missions to the International Space Station (ISS). On 25 April 1990, Space Shuttle Discovery deployed the Hubble Space Telescope, the world’s first space-based optical telescope. In May 1992, Endeavour, built to replace Challenger, sent three astronauts to recover, repair and re-launch the INTELSAT VI communications satellite. From 1993 to 2009, the Shuttle program made five trips to repair and service Hubble, with Endeavour getting it functioning properly in December 1993.

NASA’s concept of the reusable Shuttle as a costeffective vehicle that could make space travel safe and routine was never fulfilled. In light of this, it was decided to cancel the program after it had assembled the ISS to focus on new space exploration projects.